Strong force nuclear interaction of hydrogen isotopes, deuterium in particular, have been extensively studied in the regime above 30,000 eV. Tunneling phenomena through the Coulomb barrier has been well characterized and described as requiring tunneling through a barrier of 0.7 .ANG. in width and 400,000 eV in height.
Interaction of nuclei in a palladium-deuterium condensed matter system has been shown to be 10.sup.7 times more probable than the Coulomb tunneling described above. The reposed successes in this system are best accounted for by a palladium-deuterium interaction scheme occurring in the presence of strong wave function overlap. It has been shown that such wavefunction overlap may be achieved via specific molecular orbital degeneracy conditions.
Fundamental shifts in the molecular orbital topology of a condensed matter system are known to be achievable via sub-micron, nanometrically-sized surface features. Such nanometric space features alter the surface and near surface electrochemistry of a condensed matter system, and thereby effect the orbital topology of the system. This effect cannot be attributed to a simple increase in surface area; rather, the surface character at the nanoscale can only be predicted from a real-space molecular orbital perspective. The resulting properties are purely quantum-mechanical in nature, i.e., they cannot be derived by a simple extension of continuum elasticity theory to the nanoregime. Thus, nanometric, low-dimensional surface features can be expected to interact with electromagnetic fields and radiation in a corresponding quantum-mechanical nature.